Code Workshops Follow-up

During our workshops, we wrote and modified several very cool, introductory programs. If you would like these programs to tinker with them at home, the resources are in available in two Dropbox folders. Click here to access these folders.

If you do not already have the programming language, Python, you will need it to use and tinker with the programs we created for the workshops. Follow these instructions to get Python on your computer:

Python is freely available for Mac, Windows, and Linux computers. For our workshop, we used Python version 2.7.9.

NOTE: We ran the 32 bit version of Python for the class so it would be compatible with the Skier program and the other graphics based programming we did in the "Take your Code to the Next Level" workshop". To tinker with the skier and drawing programs at home, you will also need "Pygame". Download and install "pygame-1.9.1release-python.org-32bit-py2.7-macosx10.3.dmg" from here.

install Python

in your "Applications" folder, look for a subfolder called "Utilities". Open up a program called "Terminal". Once this window opens, type in the command "IDLE" and hit return. This will launch the Python programming environment.

NOTE: We ran the 32 bit version of Python for the class so it would be compatible with the Skier program and the other graphics based programming we did in the "Take your Code to the Next Level" workshop. To tinker with the skier and drawing programs at home, you will also need "Pygame". Download and install "pygame-1.9.1.win32-py2.7.msi" from here.

install Python

Once installed, you can start coding in Python by clicking on your Start menu. Find the "All Programs" link. Click on it, search for "Python". Within "Python", you will see the "IDLE". Run this to start programming in Python.

For Linux:

Many Linux computers already have Python loaded on them. If you are running Linux and are not sure whether you have Python, email wchurch@whitemountainscience.org and we will help you get things setup!

Books and other resources

There are many resources throughout the web related to learning Python. A quick search will yield a wide range of options. Two books to consider are: